Known printing methods and processes for imaging substrates other than paper suffer from a lack of printing intensity and durability due to fibrillation problems. Images can be “washed out” through both the laundering and attrition of daily exposure of use, especially the substrates are textile or fabric materials. Fibrillation is a term that the textile industry used to describe small lint of fibers break loose from the fabric material and remain on to the very surface of the fabric or textile, resulting in a substantial decrease of color intensity. Fibrillation exists in knitted, woven, or non-woven fabric textile materials when natural fibers such as cellulose or modified cellulose fibrous are used at least as part of the fabric textile.
Pigments or dyes used in many printing processes are either opaque or are in a mixture of opaque binding materials. They provide good opacity, but a high level of image or color vividness is absent. This problem is heightened when cotton or similar natural fibers materials are used in the textile substrate, due to the opacity nature of the materials. Accordingly there remains a need for a digital printing process that provides permanent fixing of the image onto a fibrous natural or synthetic substrate, and provides good colorfastness, color vividness and color vibrancy, permanency and satisfactory ‘hand’.
The use of computer technology allows substantially instantaneous printing of images. For example, video cameras or scanners may be used to capture a color image on a computer. Images created or stored on a computer may be printed on command, without regard to run size. The image may be printed onto substrates from the computer by any suitable printing means capable of printing in multiple colors, including mechanical thermal printers, ink jet printers and electrophotographic or electrostatic printers.